The Dark Knight Review (7-20-08)

Oh wow...I somehow missed this posting...

Well...long rant short, if you disregard the late Heath Ledgers' portrayal of the Joker..this film becomes a steaming pile of rhino dung. Christain Bale is by far, one of the worst Batmans...ever. Such an overrated flick..........

I have a confession to make... I was one of those wacky fanboys who stood in line for 4 hours to see this movie opening night... then did it again a week later to see it on IMAX. For me, this movie was a genuine experience much like the Lord of the Rings was; you can sit there after the movie and feel sure that you've been one of those witnessing a big cinematic moment like the Star Wars Original Trilogy. I'm like pretty much anyone else that liked this movie: I was overjoyed when Rachel Dawes got blown up. She had no place in the movie, added nothing to the character, story, or general development, and the director was right to just rub her out of the entire picture. The two things that I saw carrying The Dark Knight was the development of what Batman actually is... and Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker.

Almost without fail in the comic books, the Joker is portrayed as a madman who nonetheless can remark to another villain that "I only say here because it's funny" when speaking of Arkham Asylum... and the reader can genuinely believe that the Joker could leave at a whim without much trouble. It's a very difficult performance to bring off... you have to convince the audience that the villain is actually insane while also convincing them that the villain is so fiendishly cunning that he can seize control of events and direct them like a puppeteer. I believe that the Joker actually putting a massive amount of explosives in the hospital would have been solved by widening the timeline a little because the movie establishes that the Joker can easily get access to goons that take care of the grunt work. Ledger makes the Joker a real adversary for the remarkable intellect of Batman and it is tragic that any prior movies will go forward without this movie's chess match between two very different yet roughly equal players in a deadly game. Heath Ledger and his ability to make the Joker into what he has always been will be sorely missed.

I also enjoyed the second carrying point of the movie: the further development of Batman. The first movie established what forces pushed him onto the path that he walked; the second one examined the boundaries of the Batman's crusade against crime. Batman is a vigilante who nonetheless will risk himself to avoid killing a remorseless psychopathic murderer. He is willing to create what Lucius Fox called an abomination to catch an evil man... then put the system's self-destruct in the hands of the man who hated it most. He sacrificed his reputation as a doer of good just to avoid tarnishing his city's burnished image of a highly principled district attorney who did with the law what Batman did without it. In short, we see Batman formed into a fearsome ends-justify-the-means vigilante... who draws a thick red line between himself and a maniac like the Joker. Most of all, we see that Batman genuinely wishes that the city he loved could be cleaned and protected without the billowing cape of the Batman overshadowing it. Like Ledger making the Joker into a rough Moriarty, Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan created a movie Batman that reflects the complex persona of a principled intellectual vigilante that must be a shallow irresponsible playboy for the world.

Others have suggested what villain they'd like to see for a future Christopher Nolan directed Batman movie; my answer is that I'd like to see Bane and further, to see the "Knightfall" trilogy converted into a movie of the quality of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I think that as far as a trilogy goes, it would be the perfect bookend to the development of Batman as a person in the universe at large. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Knightfall trilogy features Batman being worn down by endless crime waves engineered by Bane until he is so exhausted that Bane can reveal himself... and snap Batman's spine, rendering him a paraplegic. Due to excellent medical help, Bruce Wayne starts on the road to recovering but in the meantime, hands the cape over to a man that he regards as a responsible guardian. The man proves to be zealous but unprincipled, so taken with the ability to suppress crime with fear that he becomes a murderer... all the while dressed in the cape of a man who has always stepped back from that abyss. Bruce Wayne eventually recovers and fights his successor for his cape... and in the end, triumphs, returning Batman to being a caped crusader, a principled vigilante who recoils from the worst evils. In my view, the book trilogy establishes exactly who the Batman is and cements him as the man who does numerous questionable things to deter and fight evil but will not destroy even the most bloodthirsty life. This would be an epic bookend to the Nolan movies if done right and firmly would set Batman on the path that logically leads to an ordinary man being regarded as equal to the superhumans and supernaturals of the Justice League.

I don't know if anyone have wrote this. But the actor who plays the mayor of gotham city is "Nestor Carbonell", and he doesen't have eyeliner. Many people thinks so , but he is really just looking like that. :P

i REALLY didnt like this movie after haven seen this movie a second time. This is the kind of movie you go WOW over once. And when you've seen this movie once, It's dead. No rewatch value at all.

I like to think that the Joker already had the explosives in the hospital, and was planning on detonating them regardless, then just decided to put out his little PSA since it'd be funnier that way.

He really doesn't wear eyeliner. I saw a picture of him as a kid on IMDB and his eyes just naturally look like that.

There nothing much to discuss about this movie.Typical generic superhero action movie. Just entertain.

Apparently, and this is according to the actor who plays the mayor of Gotham City (and, incidentally, Richard from Lost <33)... He doesn't wear eyeliner. I say, "Yeah, right."

(Besides, there are some guys who just look better with it, and he's one of them.)

Call it "blasphemy", but I'm kind of glad Ledger cannot reprise his role (HOWEVER! I'm sad that it is because he passed on). My reasoning being that the next iteration in the Nolan Trilogy could NOT feature the Joker to the degree and depth that was in TDK. As such, it'd be deeply difficult to work Joker back into the story, and allowing Ledger the same level of freedom to run around as the character. Quite honestly, I do hope that the Joker is NOT utilised in the third movie, as it would undermine the second (in my opinion anyway).

As with the first and second, the third should focus on entirely NEW villains. I'd personally like to see The Ventriloquist and Scarface make their appearance. I always found their presence to be intricate, and deeply unsettling. $20 down on seeing Killer Croc in the next one, though. Or maybe, we'll get Harley Quinn to replace Joker? Of course, I'd like to see the Animated Series version costume; not the Arkham Asylum game one. For... obvious reasons... natch.

that was an ok review overall.. i kind of like spoony's stuf. but just one thing.. dont review while eating, its fuking anoying and its gross

The biggest flaw of Dark Knight is definatly it's length. It's just about a half hour too long. I think the ending sequence with the boats was the longest part. That shoulda been cut down. Other than that, it was a really good movie and i'll rewatch it just like I rewatch Begins.

"Oh, and what the hell was up with the mayor of Gotham City wearing eyeliner?"
said Spoony.

wait, what?
i don't remember anyone with eyeliner except Joker.

and sure, Heath Ledger played Joker quite good but not better than Cesar Romero or Jack Nicholson.
and oh, Christian Bale sucks as Batman. Michael Keaton as Batman FTW

at first i saw this and i was like "o shit hes gonna hate on this? fuck im!" then i saw it was a POSITIVE review

Mr. Spoony, well done!

Great call on Maggie being shot in REALLY unattractive ways/light in this movie (I mean as you said in other films she looks fine, not super hot but still Hollywood attractive), and I mostly agree with your summary/review.

It was a very entertaining film, in fact that the first time I saw it, it scores so high on my personal review scale that it became the top action movie for me EVER, upon later reviews still super fun and entertaining but it drops back to reality of being up there with Children of Men , Hot Fuzz and 28 days later for my all time faves.

Are you eating Taco Bell?

Great review! I also loved the movie. Although there were scenes where... does it have to be that dark? Visually? Like, do police stations not have lighting? Was so annoying to be squinting all the time. I get that the producers were trying to maintain a flow of 'darkness' throughout the movie but still. Annoying.

Oh and Nestor Carbonell (mayor of gotham) doesn't wear eyeliner. I think he might be Italian... possibly Cuban or Spanish... but in any case, I've ALWAYS seen him like this, with dark eyelashes. I do have an Italian friend who owns no eye makeup and yet her lashes/eyes are crazy dark and it looks like she is.

Nevertheless, great review and kudos to those guys that made Batman. Dark Knight and the one with the Penguin are my all-time favourites :)

There was no better Joker than Heath Ledgers Joker. And i doubt that anyone will be able to fill his shoes.

Normally i rip the shit out of action movies with all the pre-planted bombs and cell phones that act like sonar and shit like that...

But fuck a duck if this movie doesn't rock. I loved it from start to finish. I think they could have put talking dinosaurs in there somewhere i wouldn't have cared.

Oscars or no oscars, still a great movie!

Long live Heath Ledger!

I loved The Dark Knight, and for all its faults...

At least it didn't have Penguin biting a guy's nose off.

You know that Heath Ledger is an absolutely fantastic actor when you find out that the hospital bombing scene was actually a technical difficulty.

All of the bombs were meant to go off at once, but they didn't. Heath just stayed in character anyway. That little jump when the bomb does go off is actually real surprise.

I mean when the tech guys fuck up a shot like that and you stay in character, that's just awesome.

I'll have to disagree with you on this one.

Granted, I didn't see "Batman Begins" (in fact, the last one I saw was the 1989 "Batman"), but I caught the latter 75% or so of this one on TV the other day. I'm not a huge fan of Batman (or "The Batman" as they call him in this film). But as a movie standing on its own, this one has some serious issues.

Mainly, it's very dark (yeah I know "Dark Knight." Har.) But it's not just the lighting, everything seems really psychotic. The only character who makes any sense is the Joker. I recall him saying "I'm an agent of chaos" or something. That makes sense. Alfred even analyzed him: "Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Anyway, I realize Batman has always been dark and brooding, and I like that about the series. But this film felt like it took itself way too seriously. I mean, there has to be some element that initiates your suspension of disbelief. But I just couldn't believe a whole lot of things. I couldn't believe that the police were so incompetent. I couldn't believe they didn't call the Army (one of the characters even pointed this out after I thought of this!) I also couldn't believe how everyone in the city could look up to a guy wearing a bat suit. At least not this city. Batman 1989 had just enough campy elements to make it work without being too cheesy, but this one was trying to be too realistic.

Another thing I couldn't stand was how the plot jumped around so much. I mean, you have to be ADHD to keep up with it. The scenes change so rapidly, I could barely digest one plot point before another was introduced. There was very little in the way of smooth transition between scenes. I couldn't tell if some of this stuff was happening on the same day, or if it took several days, weeks, or even months for all this to happen. It just seemed way too convenient, like you mentioned with the Joker planting explosives in the hospital that Harvey Dent just happened to be taken to, because he just happened to be the one that Batman rescued instead of the girl. It seems like a lot of his "agent of chaos" stuff was actually pretty controlled. OH NOES! A PARADOX!

Anyway, it was definitely a lot more dialogue-oriented than other Batman films, but did he have to talk that way whenever he put on the bat suit? It's almost like he was the multiple-personality schizophrenic instead of the Joker.

That whole thing with the sonar? Cheap. Cool, but cheap. Yeah, he's a bat, so he can see with sonar. Sounds better on paper, or for a video game. There was very little point to add the Morgan Freeman character to run the whole thing, it was just another conflict of morality the writers wanted us to see Batman discarding so they could have another excuse for the people to hate him by the end. As if they didn't already.

Gotham City seems like a place where everything is put in reverse. Seriously, a boat full of prisoners and they toss out the detonator for the other boat? Maybe that one guy could be virtuous and honorable, but I doubt they all would have been. Not to stereotype the prison population (they're people too, after all), but there is a good reason for some of those people to be there, and they didn't get there by caring for other people's well being.

Anyway, it wasn't all bad, but these are some things I couldn't see past. I give it a mediocre rating.

Of course, having said all that, Heath Ledger's Joker was by far the best Joker ever! RIP Heath.

If you're wondering about the whole 'mayor wearing eyeliner' thing...

http://www.premiumhollywood.com/2009/01/28/once...

I kinda liked this one. It's not great, but it's alright...i mean for a summer action movie it's alright. Thats sort of like saying that this particular time you got kicked in the teeth wasnt as bad as the last times though. I walked out on batman begins. No idea why, i just know something about it really rubbed me the wrong way, and i walked out after about 20 minutes of it. I've never bothered to watch it again.

This one, i didnt even bother to see because i knew right away it was overhyped, and i'd be disappointed if i paid money for it, and i agreed with that original assessment when i actually saw it.

It's just too juvenile for me. Maybe if i was 10 years younger i'd be more into it, but it just seems to silly, too appealing to an immature mind for me. I'm the kind of guy who read comic books when he was a kid, and only when i was a kid. I got to an age where they just started to seem stupid, and i moved on. So i'm really not this movie's targeted audience.

I like the direction it takes big summer action movies, i mean actually paying attention to something resembling quality, rather than just seeing the latest and greatest hollywood hunk strut around on screen for two hours, and with themes like "it would really suck if america blew up" or "love will win pearl harbor". At least this one has something resembling a story line, and backs away from too many hollywood cookie-cutter plots.

Still...i have trouble with a lot of things in it. The joker's explosions just appearing out of nowhere. They have those ferry ships at the end, and throughout the whole movie the joker has been bombing everything in sight, and nobody thinks to check the ferries for explosives before the leave. It's not like there's a pipe bomb hidden in an air duct either, no, the entire engineering bay is filled with drums of explosives wired together. Nobody noticed that?

But, as with any action movie, picking on things like that wont get you anywhere, if you do it just means you're not the person this movie was intended for. I'm not.

This moviw will live in infamy for me as one of the most overhyped movies of all time. Was it good, yes, but it wasn't because of one definable thing. It wasn't the Joker, it wasn't Christian Bale, who in my mind is almost as bad as Batman as Clooney was. It was good because of the synergy of all its parts. Many things that are great in life are great because of this very fact. When something is greater than the sum of it's parts then it works. Fortune 500 companies spend millions of dollars to get that on their board of directors. Was this a good movie? Yes. Was it the definitive performance of Batman, and the Joker? I say probably not. My opinion on Batman is that there has to be dichotomy between Bruce wayne and his alter ego. That's why i never liked any of the Batmans except for Kilmer. he captured to bipolar nature of the character better than any that have done the role. Was the Joker definitive? Maybe, but how do you classify the definitive performance of complete insanity and anarchy when the very nature of the two words defy categorization? What is insane? What is crazy? If you asked a hundred different people I'd venture that you'd get damn near a hundred different responses. That's because craziness, and insanity are completely subjective. What I might consider to be crazy, might not be what most people do. If you want to judge the insanity factor of the Joker performance, take this movie to a mental institution, show it, and see how many think it's crazy. That might be the only way to measure the insanity. But then again, the people in that place are only there because some person subjectively thought what they were doing was crazy. There's some deep shit for you.

To be fair, no one knows how the Joker does 90% of the shit he does. He is a force of nature, that no one knows anything about. And thats how he is portrayed in the comic.

THANK GOD! I thought I was just being picky about the Mayor's eyeliner. I never read any of the Batman comics (I watched all the movies and TV series/cartoons as a kid) so I wasn't sure whether his .... makeup was canon or not.

(I didn't watch Batman Begins for one reason and one reason only: Katie "ZOMIGAWD ISN'T TOM AMAZING?!" Holmes. Fuck, that woman annoys me to no end!)

Batman's voice sounded too forced. Yeah, the Dark Knight's known for his raspy voice, but Bale's interpretation sounded like he'd been gargling vodka AND rocks. And, for a movie about the Dark Knight, Batman seemed to be ... overshadowed, I suppose. It's of course the hero's role to beat up the bad guys, but that's all he seems to do in this film, whereas the other characters (Gordon, Dent) deal with the heavy, emotional drama that made me feel more for them than I did for Batman: "Oh no! Psycho Dent's got Gordon's family! Poor Gordon!! ... what's that? Batman's surrounded by thugs? Eh. He's Batman. He'll survive." Bale is convincing as Batman (after Clooney, I'll willing to embrace ANYONE, really) but he's just flat here. He shows up, fights, reveals some complicated (yet intriguing) foresight, and completes his mission succesfully. On the other hand, I did enjoy that interrogation scene when he throws the Joker all over the place, and I did want to smack the people of Gotham upside their heads in the end when they turn on Batman, even if it was his idea.

I think what distracts the movie from Batman himself are the final confrontations: since Batman's the hero you'd expect him to be the one making the decisions, but he doesn't. All he does is confront and beat up the bad guys, and little else. Not that I'd prefer an emo Batman moping about, but it seems like everyone else in this movie have it tougher than him. The people on the ferries decide to spare each other (kudos, cause if I had to choose between myself and other innocent civilians, and a boat load of criminals I'm 95% sure I'd have blown those motherfuckers up), which was great; and Gordon and his family were the real centerpoint of the last stand-off, with Batman just jumping in at the last minute to add some physical action to the scene.

Of course, Ledger's the Joker must be touched upon. I loved him. I LOVED him. The Joker already is a complex character, yet Ledger managed to add yet another dimension to him and the thought alone that we'll never get to see him reprise this role is enough to make me want to bury my sorrow in a tub of chocolate ice cream. He managed to be loathsome, terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Everyone in the theatre laughed when he realized that the hospital bombs hadn't gone off, forcing him to jiggle the detonator, wearing that nurse's uniform, but everyone gasped and went silent when the whole place was blown to shits: any character that can get such a polarized reaction is a keeper.

And yes, I have to agree with you on the Maggie Gylenhaal thing. And I have to blame the movie, since it seemed determined to make her look as washed out and hollowed as possible. I get that perhaps they didn't want to go with a ridiculously sexy female lead (taking the more realistic approach), but during the benefit party, when the Joker turns to her and says, "Well, hello, beautiful!" the camera turns on her and she looked like me when I just woke up after only two hours of sleep (i.e. DREADFUL). She looks her prettiest when she's about to die! (And speaking of which, boy was THAT a brainfuck! I was sorta stunned when she actually perished in the explosion. I kinda sat waiting for someone to walk up with her in their arms and prove she survived, but they really killed her off! Not something you see very often in superhero movies.)

My other complaints were minor and pretty insignificant since, on a whole, I LOVE this movie.

P.S: Damn you, Spoony! Watching you eat Taco Bell has given me an insatiable craving for some nacho fries and burritos myself, but we don't have Taco Bell in the Netherlands :(

Im no genius on the subject of two-face (unlike my knowledge of the Joker) but I had the belief that he has a split personality disorder not just a burned face. Tommy Lee was ridiculous and just replaced I's with We's but there wasn't really a split there but at least they tried. And because this takes place in a more real world setting its complete bullshit to have someone with split personalities so the closest thing is that Dent just kind of goes from super nice to super evil never back and forth just SuperDent to pure dag-nasty evil then nothing
What else can they do, make the riddler like the zodiac killer, make clayface just a guy with too much plastic surgery and can move his face around, do the penguin the cartoons way as opposed to the burton way

Much better than Batman Begins. I hate exposition. That's why Tim Burton's Batman was great; no origin to deal with.

Two-Face went ballistic for no reason. And I have a hard time buying a guy going on a cop killer rampage when half of his skull is showing. Remember? "You've refused pain killers"? Yeah, right.

Maggie Gyllenhaal may not be Michelle Phiffer, but she's got to be hotter than Katie Holmes. WAY off base there.

Joker ending was great. A little far-fetched, but great. If I were on that ferry I would've blown up the one carrying the mobsters in a second. But there's only so much stark realism you can take before the movie gets pretentious.

Yeah, I agree - the chick looked really ugly and the fact, that she was like the main love interest of two main chars in this movie, really killed much of momentum for me, I liked the Joker reincarnation, but not too much of anyone else, IMO the movie is not bad, but not as good as Batman or Batman returns - Tim Burtons stuff, I think they were just looking a bit too much of a serious to all the things here - come on, Batman - dude in a bat costume fights a dude in white makeup, how complicated could it be? I don't really think, that Batman character was created to watch from this kind of angle. My personal rating for this movie, calculating Sountrack, Video effects, Psychology, Storyline and acting - 5,25/10

I liked the dark night.. But i thought it wasnt THAT good. Like, everybody said this game was the fucking dogs bollocks, I saw it but if heath ledger hadnt died. i dont think everybody would have been this enthralled. More pity than anything else.